Then after some update to the "Amazon Family Parents Centre" App, they moved all parental access control off the device itself, and onto an "app" or "website". Not only that, but they blocked access to this website to anyone not in the USA region. So now, it's impossible to make any parental changes to these devices for the kids' accounts. They essentially bricked my two, and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Amazon Kids tablets, for anyone not blessed to have any means of setting an American address into your Amazon account.
The support people knew about this problem, were very helpful and did their darnedest to help me bypass this restriction within the realm of what they're allowed to do and say. But the end-result was basically: You need a US-based address, or phone number and to change your billing address to this USA region. I kindly told them to give feedback on their ticket/system/team-lead/whatever, and then gave up. Devices are useless now, and next purchase will be for something way more open or, at the very least, not subject to stupid region-locking rules that I thought we moved away from 15 years ago.
So... you didn't stop using Amazon altogether.
Honestly, fuck on-line platforms and their arbitrary bans. In meatspace, you can't be just banned from a store, or a store chain, not without a criminal record at least. Sure, user accounts are governed by vendors' ToS, and any store can ban you from their loyalty card program for any reason, but off-line, those are all incidentals not required for completing a purchase. On-line, identity, security, and optional marketing crap got bundled together into a single "account". It's a historical accident that needs to get corrected, possibly by regulatory means, to harmonize it with the general expectation that the store can't refuse you service for extra-legal reasons.
If using a web shop is cognitively exhausting to you, there likely are bigger problems underneath.
I have bought from amazon exactly once in four years now, because a vendor (a chinese one!) has Amazon as the only outlet where they provide warranty because they are plagued with counterfeits and bootleggers.
I find that fact for a chinese reseller so incredibly ironic. These guys are good people tho, bunch of gamers making the pinnacle of controllers for pc gaming with mouse clicker buttons and whatnot.
Shoutout to Playdigi Apex :D (no affiliation / economic insentive)
https://www.amazon.com/PC-Controller-Feedback-Force-Adjustab...
And how different is it from for example this one, which under half the price and looks like it has a better rating?
But you are completely right btw, it was indeed flydigi and not playdigi. And the one you linked is unknown to me.
I bought the Flydigi one after a very in depth review by this guy: https://youtu.be/WwQ4Q1mgyik?si=knLgDsqsyELq0B_t
I only turn it on if some services asks for a phone number so I don't have to give my main number.
Its on a cheap yearly plan, very low data and calls included but I won't be using these.
It’s the same thing that happened with ‘08, etc. The market can stay irrational far longer than you can stay solvent, so in most cases it makes (short term) sense to just be irrational with everyone else.
I simply signed up and scanned the QR code they gave me to set up the esim. In settings I have it turned off all the time to save battery and its only turned on if its needed to sign up for services.
Of course it may be different in some countries, but it's worth checking to be sure.
Like, sure, you might need to register your name on it, but that doesn't influence the outcome of signing up for Amazon with it.
Also it mathematically required multiple local hits before anything would've been sent to Apple.
And even at that point an actual human would've checked the image(s) (reduced quality versions) before any action is taken.
So even if you would've managed to trigger the system multiple times on someone's phone with hash collisions that actually are pictures of kittens, the most you've done is slightly inconvenience a low-paid image checker in a cheap call center.
And in the actual justice system, there's a presumption of innocence.
As for platforms, that's why in the EU big ones must engage with mediators. (Though IMHO it's better to just avoid them.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil...
It will dump your Gmail data into a mbox file, which is reasonably well supported.
That's called "using an email client" to access email.
The way it originally worked, you know, and still does[1].
I use Vivaldi browser, which has a built-in mail client[2]. You can use Mozilla Thunderbird[3], or (gasp) Outlook.
All of them allow you to maintain a complete, offline, up-to-date copy of your mailbox, which you can export and back up if needs be.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protoc...
Apps like imap-backup (https://github.com/joeyates/imap-backup) allow retaining IMAP data.
In short, don't rely on TB to retain IMAP data, (like Dropbox) it is not a backup and IME will sync data losses, deleting local data if it is no longer accessible on the server.
Take care.
This is absolutely ridiculous of Thunderbird.
That said:
1. As you said, like Dropbox, it's a local mirror, not a backup. Someone gaining access to your email and mass-deleting everything would delete your local copy too. A an actual backup of Thunderbird mail files would accomplish a backup.
2. Did your ISP somehow allow Thunderbird to log into the mailbox and gave it empty content? Or did they delete content before killing IMAP sessions? If so, it's outright malicious. Otherwise, Thunderbird shouldn't have deleted anything.
3. Having an always-on desktop box with a mail client that gets all email once a week is a lazy way to decrease the chances of being affected by something like that. Having a script that copies mailbox data into another folder (named according to date) is, well, an actual backup.